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SIMON KEAY: We see a
very major expansion
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of the port under
the emperor Trajan.
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Now the dating of
this great enlargement
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was probably somewhere
between AD 112 and AD 117.
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And the enlargement consisted
of the creation of a new basin,
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an additional harbour basin,
which lies directly in front
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of me.
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And in other words,
which is to the east
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of the earlier Claudian basin.
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And this basin,
we know very well
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because it still survives,
by historical accident.
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And it's, today,
filled with water.
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And we know that
in antiquity, it
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was probably about
five metres deep.
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It would have been surrounded
on all six of its sides
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by a number of major
public buildings
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but primarily warehouses
for the storage of goods
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from across the Mediterranean,
by an important series
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of administrative buildings,
and by a temple complex.
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In addition to that, the
emperor and his architects
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took the trouble to add
an additional canal, which
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connected one of the earlier
Claudian canals to the Tiber
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as a way of facilitating the
process of transshipment,
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speeding up the process
of unloading cargoes
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from big sea-going ships onto
smaller river-going ships
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and taking them up
the river to Rome.
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So this major complex
at this stage,
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in addition to the two basins,
the warehouses, and the canals,
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and so on, would have
covered something
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in the region of 3 and
1/2 square kilometres.
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This is a massive
complex that was also
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linked to the river
port of Ostia, which
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of course continued to function.
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And of course, was directly
connected to Imperial Rome
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itself by a road, the
Via Campana, Portuensis.
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And, of course, by the
river Tiber itself.
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All three elements
Portus, Ostia, and Rome,
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and in addition to that,
the port of Civitavecchia
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further up the coast
from here, comprising
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what one could perhaps call
a port system, a complex
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for the supply of the
great city of Rome
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with its one million
people that is
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without parallel in antiquity.
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